Oakspear

Oh, I think it's connected. It's been my observation that people who "believe in" God have various mind pictures of what God is and what God does that may have nothing to do with the doctrinal positions of the church that they belong to, or Christianity in general. One of my sisters and I were having a discussion a few years ago about how she was mad at God because of several things that had gone wrong in her life, things that, in my opinion, were the direct result of her own choices (in particular, she lost custody of her children to her ex-husband because she was in prison). She just couldn't understand why "God allowed it to happen". My response to her was "maybe God isn't what you think he is". Not as a suggestion that God didn't exist, but that she was viewing God, not as he was, or even how he was described in the Bible, but as a creation of her own mind.

In some ways, your WOW year sounded a lot like my year before I went WOW. I was a twig leader for most of the year and we too had a lot of fun, got good results from our witnessing and ran multiple classes, as well as seeing things that we interpreted at the time as miraculous. Not to say that there weren't red flags, there were, but overall that year was a positive experience. In retrospect, the reason probably was lack of leadership. Not that there weren't leaders, we were in Queens NY that had two active branches plus a Spanish-language branch, part of an Area that had 7 or 8 branches, with another big Area nearby. No, we technically had leaders, it's just that the first couple of layers weren't Way Corps, they were people who naturally rose up to take leadership positions. None of the branch leaders were Corps grads, most of the twig leaders weren't even advanced class grads and the Area leader was interim Corps, not a grad. But some points have been made about the lack of genuine leadership qualities of Way "leaders". For quite a while I was influenced by that leadership model. I was in various roles in retail management for many years and unfortunately brought the Way template of leading people into my day job. I was a horrible manager until I was able to shed the Way influence.

That whole year was just another one of many red flags that I foolishly ignored

It depends I'd guess there are some people who flit from one belief or disbelief system with out any real grounding, just sampling and exploring. But I wouldn't dismiss the possibility of someone having a series of sincerely held beliefs.

Did anybody do what was was expected of them on the WOW field? If I remember correctly there was a requirement that you witness 48 hours a week (average 8 hours/day since we were supposed to take one day off) I was sent to a town of around 5,000 in western Nebraska. I'm pretty sure I personally didn't witness for 48 hours/week, but it was certainly possible, assuming you only worked an average of 4 hours/day at your part-time job. I usually worked around 7am - 11am, so if I had an hour to walk home and eat lunch, I had around 5 hours to witness before going home for dinner. Assuming an hour to prepare and eat dinner, I would have to be out witnessing again from 6-9 pm to get up to those 8 hours. I'm pretty sure that (1) I wasn't disciplined enough to keep that schedule & (2) we all had different work schedules, so it was tough to go out in pairs during the day & (3) with only 5,000 people, pretty soon everyone in town had either been witnessed to or had heard of us & wasn't interested. [5000 people divided by 3.5 (the average number of people per household) = 1429 households. If we knocked on a slow pace of 2 doors per hour per pair (assuming 2 x 2) that 32 households witnessed to per day x 6 days of witnessing/week for 192 doors knocked on every week. If we kept up this pace, we would have knocked on every door in 7 1/2 weeks. We were in this town for around 25 weeks - & were moved mid-year to a city of around 25,000] We ran out of people long before we even hit the theoretical 7 1/2 weeks. The town's churches (TWENTY of them) had heard we were coming. That year, the Corps WOW Coordinators were sent out before Corps week to scout out the territory, our leader had made a few contacts and secured a job for himself, and in doing so had given the town's religious folks an opportunity to get ready for our arrival. We spent a lot of energy battling organized opposition and threats to our safety. We started spending our witnessing time during the day drinking coffee at a local café and in the evening drinking beer at the bar, striking up conversations, but not really pushing it. By the time we were moved mid year to a college town of 25,000, which was much more open to proselytizing, we had already given up any pretense of doing the program. We did run a PFAL class made up of 2 guys who we had met in Sidney (one because he was having sex with one of the WOW women) and a handful of people that a pair of WOWvets had signed up before we arrived. By the time summer arrived we'd spend our days after work hanging out at the lake. When August and the ROA arrived we felt like we had endured, not served. We were relieved that it was all over

I'm not an Atheist, but for the most part function as one. I have seen no evidence that there is life after death. If there is, fine, but I'm not holding my breath. One of the hardest things I had to do in the last few years was attend the wake & funeral of my youngest brother, who died around this time last year after a long battle against cancer. With the exception of our dad, he was the most religious person that I know. He believed that he was going to be with Jesus, most of the family gathered around believed the same thing. I didn't. To me he was just gone.

I missed this before I posted by last reply. While I will contingently believe anyone who tells me what their belief/disbelief status is, often their own words contradict their self-identification. No Atheist will say that they hated God, because you can't hate something that you don't believe exists. In my own experience, a lot of people who converted to Christianity came not from Atheism, but from a reaction against a straw man version of God, or just an ignorance of Christian doctrine.

This should be an easy question with an obvious answer, i.e. of course some can change a deeply held belief, but there's those who employ the "No True Scotsman" fallacy by claiming that the ex-Christian was never really a Christian, or the ex-Atheist was never actually an Atheist. To be fair, there are likely those who outwardly conformed to Christian practice, went to church, "witnessed" etc, but never really believed it all and changing their mind was just admitting that they never truly believed what they said they believed. But you can't reflexively assume that anyone who changes their mind in this manner falls into that category. I think you have to believe people when they say that they believed. And the path from belief to disbelief is going to be different for everyone. For some it might be an trauma, for others it might involve realizing the inconsistency within the Bible, for still others it might be the lack of any evidence that might support belief. The change from Atheism to Christianity is similar. There might be people who say they're Atheists, but who are really just people who either have rejected organized religion, or simply don't know the fine points of Christian doctrine but still retain an unfocussed belief that there is a god who somewhat resembles the god of the Bible. For people like that, it's not that great a jump from being a "none" to a Bible believer. There may even be people who truly were Atheists, but something caused them to change their minds. I can only speculate (but won't) on what that might be.

I forgot about the Advanced Class Specials....where we rehashed all the useless stuff we were fed in the Advanced Class

Skyrider, your posts always give a POV that many of us non-Corps didn't see. Frankly, most of my negative TWI experiences involved Way Corps who were enforcing dictates from above and making my life miserable. And I'm sure some of them enjoyed the power trips that they engaged in. But we don't often consider that Way Corps were the leading wave of those who were abused. Regarding the ROA, it didn't take long for it to change for me from a cool place to see old friends, kick back and enjoy the fellowship, to a burden. When the ROA was cancelled after 1995 I breathed a sigh of relief that I would never again be pressured to attend it ever again. Not only was that last ROA a horror show of flooding and heat, but Martindale billed it as a "class" where you were pushed to attend various scheduled teachings with little or no free time. Trying to get our kids fed, showered, and dressed each morning in time to rush them to children's fellowship so we could rush to the morning teaching. Then get yelled at after the morning of the flood because I missed a teaching so I could get our wet, muddy, tent and sleeping bags cleaned & dried and because my wife was a minute late for twig fellowship after stopping to get snacks for the kids. Apparently we weren't putting God first. Then rushing around on the morning that we were leaving so we could leave at the same time as our Corps Branch leader who insisted on "caravanning" with us, but then later decided to separate from us because we weren't moving fast enough or making too many bathroom stops.

I don't stop by here that often, but do peek in from time to time. This time around I found some interesting (to me) discussions.

WordWolf brought up the 'No True Scotsman' fallacy in reference to a condescending response to my admission that Christianity is in my rear view mirror. It got me thinking about how the 'Law', as applied by TWI, was a variation of this fallacy. We were taught, i.e. indoctrinated, with the perspective that whatsoever we believed "for", would definitely, without question, come to pass. God allegedly promised as much. When we didn't receive, that was supposedly evidence that we must not have been "really" believing. It didn't matter how much you were convinced that you were believing, you couldn't be if you didn't get the result that you believed for. On a side note, my disbelief in the Bible doesn't preclude me from comparing TWI doctrine and practice with what it says in the Bible, which is really the point of this thread as I understand it. I'm keeping my own opinion about the efficacy of prayer, whether God intervenes in the world, or even the existence of God out of this discussion because it would be off topic.

Others responded to your comment much more politely and succinctly than the responses that I had teed up. I'm also a non-practicing moderator, so I know the rules.

It's like you're a prophet or something! No, it's much easier to yell at people for not stopping the rain.

Interesting. The so-called law of believing as promulgated by Wierwille certainly encouraged a mindset of self-flagellation when things went horribly wrong. At best it was an attempt to take the blame off God in instances of death, disease or other calamity. I've seen plenty of people whose experience of bad things happening in their lives caused them to get mad at God. People need to find a way to explain (or explain away) when those bad things happen. Is it "the god of this world"? Is it "part of God's plan"? Is it a result of our own actions? is it some kind of biblical version of karma? The "law of believing" is just another attempt to make sense of the way things are. Full disclosure: I'm no long a Bible-believer in any sense of the term. While I'm not an atheist, I don't feel the need to look for supernatural explanations for bad (or good) things. Stuff happens. What's that verse about the rain falling on the just and the unjust? If there is a God or gods, I don't give them blame or credit. But the law of believing as applied by The Way went well beyond seeking an explanation for suffering and became just another way to assert control by manipulating people's emotions

This expectation to stop rain by believing crap continued for quite a while. I was at the last-ever ROA (1995?) with my whole family (me, wife and six kids). We had bought a big tent for the adults and the youngest four kids and a small dome tent for the teenagers. A couple of nights in there was a thunderstorm that lasted for hours. Torrents of rain that never seemed to stop. Of course it was no surprise that the low-lying tent city was going to be soon under water. I don't care how good your tent is, you're going to get flooded out. We ended up decamping to the Corps tents for the night. We were then "allowed" to use dryers in the on-site residences to dry out our sleeping bags. The part we were in wasn't even the worst. After I got my wife and kids safely in the Corps tents I, along with a group of guys waded into other parts of tent city to rescue help people whose tents were awash in calf-deep water. And if that wasn't the worst of it, not only were we expected to be fresh and ready for the morning teaching and children's fellowship, but Martindale ripped into us all for not being prepared.

Your post is a perfect distillation of TWI "doctrine" Let's not forget his common assertion that the original had to be such-and-such (because otherwise it would contradict his predetermined interpretation)

Quote of the day!

Sure it could be a familial relationship, or it could just be a figurative usage. I just saw a reference to Galileo as the father of modern astronomy. No implication that he was literally a father or ancestor of astronomers

I don't remember Martindale ever saying that you could get possessed by taking the PFAL class, but I have been away from that nonsense for 20 years, so maybe. But he did push the whole concept of "old wineskins" when it came to a lot of Wierwille-produced material, almost like it was a 20th century version of dispensationalism. Advanced Class grads weren't Advanced Class grads any more if you didn't take his class, you got reproved if you wore your old WOW pin to a Way function. I think there was more Wierwille-focused loyalty than he anticipated.

And for those of us still in during the WayAP years - Martindale came up with his own version of the Advanced Class which meant all of us Advanced Class grads were no longer Advanced Class grads and had to spend the time and money to get our butts to get to New Knoxville to take the new class. And it came complete with brand spankin' new name tags: white on blue! Yay! Once I made the mistake of wearing my "old wineskins" white-on-green nametag at a Way function and got reproved for it.

I mentioned that TWI plated the seeds of their own destruction. Even though so much of what they promulgated was illogical nonsense, some of the methodology encouraged us to look at Way doctrine critically and question it later on when we weren't so ignorant or naïve. Understanding verses in the context, in light of Biblical era customs etc were all good tools for understanding the Bible - tools that Wierwille undoubtedly intended merely as cover for his agenda of command & control, but turned out to be effective means to unravel the BS.

Of course they didn't get answered. I can only speak for myself, but I didn't know squat about the Bible before I got involved in The Way Corporation. Wierwille's explanations, as ridiculous as they sound from my current vantage point, made sense to my ignorant teenaged self. It's easy! Point to a Bible verse that appears to contradict mainstream church teachings. Do this enough times and you've undermined the credibility of mainstream Christianity to the newbies who don't know anything. In some ways TWI planted the seeds for its own destruction by emphasizing Biblical research (even though they didn't mean it).

I thought that slur was spelled "wop"? I always referred to it as the WayAP class, although a lot of people called it the WAP (pronounced to rhyme with "wrap") Class. At some point Martindale decreed that we should call it "the Way Class"...

Wierwille, after spending the first four sessions of PFAL repeating in various iterations that the Bible is without error, then spends a few sessions pointing out contradictions (or "apparent" contradictions if you will) and then shows you how they're not really contradictions...here's what it really says, what it really means, building up his own street cred as someone who can uncover the truth when every denomination in history got it wrong. That was the real purpose of PFAL, beneath the veneer of Biblical research that any Joe Schmoe could do was the idea that it was Wierwille who's conclusions should be trusted without question. If anyone questioned Wierwille's conclusions they were strongly encouraged to "hold it in abeyance", since obviously you were missing something if your conclusions were different than Wierwille's. Which was why things that made no sense, even within the context of "research" that Wierwille pushed, were accepted, at least provisionally. Things like "The Great Principle", or the idea that the original sin of Adam & Eve was masturbation, or the thundering herd of grammatical errors and leaps of illogic that filled so much of his "teaching"